“Even”
Balanced gift shopping.
Brothers each unwrap their own.
Long shot for sharing.
Steve D
Tag: Steve D
December Write Day: Finishing Slightly Stronger
November was a long month, and only partially in a good way. Obviously, the start of the holidays and the chance to see some family was great. It was also very busy for me at work, which took a lot of the mental capacity I might have otherwise had to do things I’d like to do at home. Also, our entire family has been sick to some degree over the last three or four weeks.
So, as you may have been able to tell by the extra haiku I posted in November, rather than writing full posts, some of my goals went less than well.
Last Month’s Goals
- Read three books.
- Exercise every day and go to the gym twice per week.
- Write long-form at least 10 days.
Read three books?
Nope. I’ve finished one book and made progress on two others. I started listening to Black leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James on Audible, and it’s taking me longer to get into than I anticipated. I’m on chapter five, and I feel like I’m just beginning to understand what this story is actually like. I’m definitely going to continue reading it. It’s just taking me a bit longer to sink my teeth into.
I’ll probably end up picking away at other books during December in between chapters, just to stay on top of my reading goal. I need to finish one more book in December to meet my Goodreads goal of reading 26 books this year. I’m going to go out on a limb and say I will not finish Black leopard, Red Wolf this month, so I’ll finish something else to hit that mark.
Set my exercise/gym routine?
Also no. Again, busy month, and then getting sick did little to help my gym efforts. I feel like I’ve mostly been drained on energy the last few weeks, and I’m just now starting to feel normal again. I’m back on a more regular exercise routine now, but it’s been mostly yoga. I’m hoping to get back to the gym this week.
Write long-form at least 10 days?
No, and honestly, this goal was partially hurt by me not having the time/energy to write long-form blogs for a couple weeks. I definitely didn’t spend enough time revising New Earth, but I also just didn’t spend enough time writing or reading period in November.
I’m now nearly finished with this round of revisions for New Earth, and I’d like to have more specific goals for my revisions going forward. I’ll expand on that next.
Goals for December
- Read three books. Probably in the form of shorter novels.
- Exercise at least every other day and go to the gym more than once per week. I’m backing off last month’s goal a bit just to give myself some space during the holidays. Note that I’m saying go to the gym more than once per week. This basically means I want to average more than one gym trip per week. If it ends up only being six total, that’s still a win.
- Finish current round of revisions for New Earth. This should be doable, since I only have 15 pages or so to go.
- Create character sheets with physical descriptions/clothes for main characters. This applies to both Uprooted and New Earth, which effectively have the same primary characters. I’ve tried to incorporate this tuff organically in my revisions, but I don’t want it to feel forced, and I don’t want it to be inconsistent. So I’m going to create character sheets based on what I have so far, expand on them, and then use those to inform how I describe these characters throughout both stories.
- Outline New Earth for chapter structure. This is something I did with Uprooted that helped me understand the overall plot flow better, and restructure chapters in ways that made sense for the story. I’ll do the same with New Earth.
Note that I’m not focused on writing a certain number of days this month. I have specific tasks I want to achieve, and everything else is bonus. It may be that this is still too much for me to achieve in one month, but it’s just a different tack. We’ll see how it goes.
Steve D
Haiku Sunday – Decorate
“Decorate”
Lights and greenery
to brighten gray winter days,
recall the spring.
Steve D
LOKI Season 2 Bookends the Best of Recent MCU Stories
I’m a couple of weeks late writing this post, because I did not watch Loki season 2 as it was released on DIsney+. I mostly watched over the last two weeks, and then binged both episodes five and six last week.
Since then, I’ve been mulling over the season (and series?) finale while listening to a couple of my favorite podcasts’ coverage of the show. And I’ve come to a simple conclusion.
Loki is the best story that the MCU has told since Avengers: Endgame.
I will not spoil this show, just as I try not to spoil books I read and review. But through 12 episodes and two seasons of television, the titular character follows an arc that must be compared with similar heavyweight arcs of Thor or Iron Man in the Infinity Saga.
Loki enters season one as a villain, freshly time-jumped from the end of Avengers, when he tried to invade New York City with an interdimensional alien army. Through his experiences at the Time Variance Authority and witnessing other timelines — other pasts and possible futures — Loki changes and evolves into something other than the conquering Asgardian god of mischief.
I have been mostly underwhelmed and occasionally disappointed with the MCU TV shows over the last few years. They have primarily felt like movies that were stretched too thin or longer television seasons that were crammed into tighter spaces, with no obvious direction to point towards in terms of building a story around the next big villain.
Loki, the character, is not that next big villain, but Loki, the show takes Big Villain Stakes that most of the recent MCU properties have been missing, and boils them down to emotional, dramatic storytelling between characters.
And the climactic finale, rather than being a CGI punch-fest, is a stunning and spectacular moment of agency for one character to choose his path.
The series ends so resolutely, so satisfyingly, that Marvel could end the series, put a period on Loki’s character journey, and I would be content. If nothing else, I can go read the comic run that inspired this show.
However Marvel came to execute Loki as a storytelling vision, I hope they follow a similar path for TV and movies going forward.
Steve D
Haiku Sunday – Olfactory
“Olfactory”
Wood fire smoke tingles,
mingled forest detritus,
lively icy breeze.
Steve D
Inspired by Merriam-Webster’s word of the day.
Haiku Sunday – Prep
“Prep”
Charge social meter,
clear out fridge ingredients,
ready the transport.
Steve D
Author’s note: Apologies for the lack of a more substantive post. I shifted into holiday mode last week and have been coasting towards my favorite holiday ever since. Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends.
Haiku Sunday – Slept
“Slept”
Night of sleep so deep,
morning comes as a welcome,
everyone rested.
Steve D
Haiku Wednesday – Middle
“Middle”
Slow climb to the peak,
peering down at the descent,
hope for steady path.
Steve D
Haiku Sunday – Haunt
“Haunt”
Crises stacked like bones,
spilt from civilized closets,
everyday nightmares.
Steve D
On FOUR LOST CITIES and Building this Fantasy Town
This post is not a real book review, at least, not entirely. I just finished listening to Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz, and it got me thinking and rethinking the way I design and evolve cities in my fantasy universe.
A running theme in my world-building — and one of my pervading interests in history and anthropology — touches on the rise and fall of cities and civilizations. For years, I had the reductionist viewpoint that great cities rose and fell in linear patterns, and with clear markers for their demise.
When I learned that the far more common pattern is for cities (or civilizations) decay for years or decades or centuries before fading from prominence, I wanted to explore that in my storytelling.
Four Lost Cities provides a really interesting investigation into the formation and decline of cities across human history. Newitz uses archeological evidence to make the case that the evolution and dissolution of cities is not a linear path, that the very definition of a “city” and its growth are defined more by socio-cultural forces of its time than by rigid and often arbitrary models based solely on commerce.
What would this look like in a setting of my making? Would I be able to capture the uncertain rise and long decay of a city or a people in character-centric stories?
My current work-in-progress, the duology I’ve been referring to as The Herb Witch Tales, spawned from this theme. Before I knew who my characters were, I wanted to explore a city’s evolution from small port town, to sprawling tent camp of migrant settlers, to developed population center.
The story developed from the idea of the city, and I found characters to fit that initial blueprint. The duology is now much more grounded than that much broader idea, but I’ve tried to pay particular attention to the ways in which the characters perceive and interact with place — the places they’ve lost, left, or found.
Although The Herb Witch Tales is currently a duology, I can easily imagine future stories where the growth of this family is inextricably tied with the growth of the place they come to call home.
So, I must recommend Four Lost Cities, because it is informative, thought-provoking, and inspiring in a world-building kind of way.
Steve D
Evening Satellite Publishing 